


As Long as You Can Still Keep Him Safe

by verersatz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verersatz/pseuds/verersatz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: After the battle with Lucifer at the Pit, Cas returns to life to discover the choices Dean has made in his absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Long as You Can Still Keep Him Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Supernatural season 5 finale and season 6.
> 
> Title from http://coffeeandcheesecake.tumblr.com/post/34649089395/companion-piece-to-this-poem. This is meant to be somewhat AU: Cas is resurrected at the end of season 5 a little bit later after everyone has left the cemetery, Sam is resurrected as himself with his soul, etc.

Castiel is only dead for ten minutes or so, but in those ten minutes, everything changes.  
  
The Winchesters claim victory as he has always believed-- _known_ \--they will. This he learns later when he arrives on Bobby's doorstep in a rustle of anxious wings, hoping, praying they are all still living. The wordless expressions of faith and earnest pleas blossom in his chest as they always have, familiar like a well-worn garment of clothing, but Castiel no longer knows to whom he is praying. Not God. Cas can't go back to that, not after all he's thought and done, not after the time in the alley with his fists bloodying Dean's face as he screams his pain, throat and insides raw.  
  
Yet someone has brought him back. Someone has resurrected Bobby, too, it turns out. And, despite the loss of Sam and Adam, both Lucifer and Michael are locked tightly away. The apocalypse has been averted, cut short, Bobby tells him. Cas can't help seeing God's hand in this, and with that thought comes a mess of feelings like he has never known before.  
  
 _Why abandon me, then save me?_ he asks in his prayers. _How can you cause so much hurt, so much pain, if you do still love me?_  
  
But, of course, there is no answer.  
  
*    *     *  
  
A week or two passes (Cas still can’t sort out the human ways of measuring time) before he thinks he's ready to see Dean. The time spent alone hasn't done him much good; there is still a God-shaped hole inside him filled with anger and confusion and doubt. But Dean has always helped before, Cas remembers. There may be no way to patch the hole, but Dean helps him forget the emptiness is there for a little while. Whatever other bewildering, all-too-human emotions Dean brings with him, he at least brings that.  
  
He pops in on Bobby again, gets an address. Bobby is looking at him with something that reminds Castiel of pity or sympathy or sadness, but Cas doesn't quite understand. He narrows his eyes and tilts his head, considering, until the gruff man finishes writing and hands over the scrap of paper. Without a word, Cas accepts it and vanishes, blinking back into existence under a streetlight on a dark, quiet road lined with houses.  
  
The Impala is nowhere in sight; this is his first clue that something is wrong. Dean may have hidden it, though, he tells himself. Who knows what sort of job he’s working here. Taking a few steps closer to the house, he peers through a lighted window swept by the low-hanging branches of a squat, sturdy tree.  
  
The room is spacious, neatly organized--somewhat like Bobby’s home, but with less of the lived-in look and mess. It is worlds away from the hotel and motel rooms the Winchesters tend to cycle through, which Cas has become accustomed to, even somewhat fond of. Dean sits on a couch, looking out of place--or at least Cas thinks so. Lights from a television flicker across the man’s lined, tired features, and for a moment, seeing those features again brings warmth to places that have been cold since the afternoon in the cemetery when he died.  
  
From somewhere beyond where he can see, a woman enters and makes her way to the couch. When she sits, she settles up against Dean. Her palm slides to rest atop his thigh. Castiel’s eyes widen as Dean’s arm stretches to wrap around her, holding her close by his side.  
  
Then Dean turns to look at her, and, through the window, Cas can glimpse his face.  
  
There is a sudden white-hot burning in his chest that Cas doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, can’t figure out what to do with. Because Dean might have been on a job. He might have been manipulating this woman for information. He might have been under some kind of spell--trapped in black magic’s claws, fooled by a shapeshifter, taken in by a siren. This might even have been one of the women Dean visits sometimes to satisfy his keen sexual appetite.  
  
But one look at Dean’s face, and Cas knows. He still has to work at human expression, still needs to puzzle over the intricacies and how they differ among individuals--but this is Dean, and this is a look that Cas has seen a thousand times. This is the way Dean looks at Sam. This is how Dean looks at Bobby. This is not a look Dean could ever be tricked or twisted into sharing with someone; it comes from a place the man shuts more tightly than the prison that holds the Morning Star. It is a look Cas has studied, has made himself intimately familiar with, though he cannot admit to himself why he has done so.  
  
The moment is gone in a flash; Dean turns away, the two shapes on the couch move closer, and the street is instantly empty, nothing left behind but a single flicker of the streetlight and a breeze that softly stirs the neatly-manicured grass.  
  
*    *    *  
  
Lisa.  
  
Cas carries the name with him as he stands under the streetlight or against a tree and observes. Neither Dean nor anyone else will see him unless he wishes it--and right now he does not wish it.   
  
He takes in more comfortable nights in front of the television, meals accompanied by conversation and genuine smiles, and bright Saturday afternoons when Dean rides some strange machine around the front yard, the smell of fresh-cut grass heavy enough in the air that Cas almost sneezes. He takes in stolen glances and long looks and touches that quicken their breathing. When their breath becomes too fast, Cas does not stay to see what happens next.  
  
It is not long before he discovers there is a boy, too, and he puzzles over the sinking feeling in his gut. The boy is an anchor, he realizes. He watches their interactions, sees the way the child gazes at Dean: a look of respect, eagerness, a need to prove himself. It is something else Cas recognizes without effort: the look of a son toward his father. But that thought makes him feel hollow all over again, so he carefully tucks it away and returns to his silent vigil. His coat stirs in the gentle breeze, the only part of him that moves.  
  
This is good for Dean, Bobby has assured him. Dean has gotten out of the life, and Bobby wants to keep it that way. “And don’t that boy deserve a break?”  
  
Cas knows he agrees, but he can’t quash the squeezed, breathless feeling in his chest.  
  
Sam is back, too, he soon learns, and Sam seems to like Lisa. “Dean’s happy,” Sam tells him while stuffing bags of salt into his trunk. “He doesn’t need to jump back into all this. All he ever wanted was the chance at a real life, a normal family.”  
  
Cas feels his breath catch when Sam says “family,” and he painstakingly sets aside the images of Dean that threaten to surface, the ones he has never shared and that he does not like to look at directly or acknowledge. But Sam is staying away, has given Dean to Lisa and the boy, and if Sam can make that sacrifice, Cas should be able to, as well. After all, what is he to Dean? A stranger from a world Dean has disbelieved in most of his life? A creature who fell, who failed, who died more than once when Dean needed him most? No. He is broken, and Dean is broken. That may have been what drew them together, what gave Castiel a lifeline to cling to when all else was lost, but it is not what Dean needs. Cas cannot fix him. Cas cannot be a family for him, not when he barely knows the meaning of the word anymore himself.  
  
*    *    *  
  
Time passes before he visits the house again. He isn’t sure how much--still, the tricky divisions between days and hours and weeks and minutes elude him. He struggles to stay occupied, to stay elsewhere, but the truth is that he has nowhere to go. Home is not an option. In fact, he isn’t even sure if Home means Heaven anymore. It has come to his attention recently that the question has shifted; no longer does he wonder whether they would take him back, but whether he could bring himself to return. He remembers often the way he felt upon hearing what Joshua had said about God in the Garden. It was as if the earth had dropped away beneath him, and for an insane, dizzying moment, he feared he would plummet straight into Hell. He recalls, as well, the way Dean looked when telling him, the deep and bottomless anger that touched the worn and weary lines of his face. It is always at this point he realizes he is thinking of Dean, and he stops.  
  
Sam is still hunting, and it is a relief to help out when he can. Sam has new friends, though, new family members. Cas does not have much interest in them. Dean has always been the door through which he entered the lives of humans; without him, Cas feels lost, unsure. Eventually, he drifts away, and Sam doesn’t seem to notice much.  
  
He finds himself back at the house without meaning to go there. It is crowded today. They are in the backyard, sitting outside in the sunlight. There are other people, many of them children. The boy--Lisa’s boy ( _he is_ not _Dean’s boy_ )--is tearing colorful paper away from a box wrapped in ribbon. Everyone is eating cake, even Dean ( _Dean likes pie_ ). Lisa, beside him, leans in close, puts a hand on his arm, speaks to him ( _Dean requires personal space_ ). The corners of his eyes crinkling, Dean laughs, and there is something joyful and new in his face that cuts directly to Cas’s core.  
  
In that moment, something happens to Cas; he feels his brain light up as if with holy fire. The ache inside him has become sharp; it stabs into him and shreds his insides. He feels himself shaking, trembling, and only realizes when everyone looks up in surprise that he is causing the ground beneath them to rumble, as well. His wings shift, whipping up air, flapping his trenchcoat about his legs. He wants to scream, to tear into Dean like he did in the alley--another lifetime, now--but he has no words for how he feels. No human words, anyway. A high-pitched droning rattles the windows of the house before he clamps down on it; to speak in his true voice here and now would be too much, would burn them all to death from the inside out.  
  
 _I saved you!_ he wants to shout. _I rebelled for you! It was me that raised you from Hell. It was me that died for you twice over. I chose humanity, Dean, and I chose them because of you._  
  
Closing his eyes, Castiel takes a long breath. Then another. The air calms; the earth settles. What had been building inside him subsides like a receding wave, leaving behind it nothing but a dull throb that pulses through numbness. When Cas opens his eyes, Dean is on his feet, casting his gaze around, his brow furrowed. It is too exhausting at the moment to try to read his expression.  
  
Turning away, he disappears in the same moment that Dean says something that sounds like, “Cas?”  
  
*    *    *  
  
This now is the second time he has staggered in drunk to speak with Sam, and Cas hates himself for it. _This is embarrassing behavior_ , says a voice in his head. _Angels do not act this way._  
  
 _I’m no longer an angel_ , Cas counters, concentrating hard on the blurring and buzzing in his brain so he won’t feel anything else. _I am nothing._  
  
“Castiel?” Sam glances up over his laptop, forehead scrunched and anxious.  
  
“Bobby told me where,” Cas slurs, gesturing around at the dingy motel room. He collapses onto a hard chair in the corner and, for a brief instant, feels a spike of intense and irrational dislike for the room. Everything looks as it should, right down to Sam hunched over his laptop and a stack of papers at the table, except for one very large omission.  
  
But that is not a road Cas can afford to travel down, as far gone as he is, so he blinks hard and finds Sam again in the mess of unfocused shapes.  
  
“Find another liquor store?” Sam asks. The question is a joke, but there is enough concern in his voice that even Cas can hear it.  
  
“Need help,” Cas grinds out before he can lose his nerve.  
  
“Oh,” says Sam. “Okay, um, sure.” He turns his chair so he’s facing Cas and scoots it a little closer. Folding himself over, he rests his arms against his legs and leans forward. “What’s going on?”  
  
Even as he sits wondering how he’ll ever get this out and why he was stupid enough to think this was a good idea, Cas finds himself blurting, “Dean.” He is mortified. His jaw goes rigid as he glances off to the side, unable to meet Sam’s eyes.  
  
“Oh,” says Sam again. Silence follows and Cas strongly considers disappearing and trying to forget the entire thing ever happened. He is busily engaged with wondering where he can run to when Sam speaks. “You miss him, don’t you.”  
  
There is no laughter in his voice, no sense of mocking. When Cas looks back at him, Sam nods and adds, “Me too.” Cas squints and, if he is reading things right (why can’t he ever just be _sure_ of these things for once?), he thinks he sees sadness and understanding there. He offers Sam a short nod in return, uncertain of what else to say.  
  
“Not sure how much help I can really be.” Sam shrugs. “I think it’s just going to suck for a while. But he _is_ happy, Cas. I think he’s healing some. Lisa and Ben, they’re good for him.”  
  
“No!” He thinks the agonized syllable is in his head, but Sam’s head jerks in surprise. Cas shuts his eyes and tries to breathe. After a moment or two, his mouth twitches, and he says, “Sorry.”  
  
“It’s all right.” Sam clasps his hands awkwardly between his knees. They lapse into uneasy silence again, broken only by the sounds of the motel around them: the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings, the growl of a flushing toilet, a car passing through the parking lot.   
  
Finally, Castiel shifts very slightly in his chair and says, “How?” He steels himself, forces himself to meet Sam’s gaze. “How do you manage it?” The question is hard for him; his voice emerges more ragged and gravelly than usual.  
  
Sam either does not notice or chooses not to comment. He takes a moment to consider. “It’s about keeping him safe, Cas,” he explains. He sits a little straighter in his chair. “It’s what you do for the people you really care about. Whatever it takes. Dean’s the one who taught me that.”  
  
 _Whatever it takes_ , he repeats to himself. And he knows Sam is right. And yet.  
  
Before Jimmy Novak, Castiel did not know what it was to have a heart. ( _Before Dean._ ) Now, he wishes that he could return to that state, that he could cut from his chest the relentless thudding pain that fills him. Grief, he thinks humans call it. Even as he listens to Sam’s words, even as he recognizes the truth in them, Cas knows they will not be enough to dispel this grief that pursues him with the tenacity of a Hellhound.  
  
As he nods mutely at Sam, Cas catches himself praying; old habits die hard. He shoves the thoughts aside, a bright spark of anger flaring up inside him.  
  
*   *   *  
  
Some days, he considers talking to Dean. He imagines it. It would be simple to walk the handful of steps to the door and knock. But what could he find to say? And for what possible reason would Dean want to talk to him?  
  
 _Dean is happy now_ , he reminds himself. _He is happy without you._  
  
And so Cas remains where he is and he watches the house and he keeps Dean safe.  
  
 _Whatever it takes_ , he says to himself. He says it as Dean and the boy work side by side over the exposed parts of the pickup truck, their hair mussed and faces smudged with grease. He says it as Lisa snuggles closer to Dean as they hold each other and drift off to sleep. He says it as Dean smiles at strangers, passes around cold beers among the crowd on his neighbor’s front lawn.  
  
Some days, Cas considers leaving. He could join Sam again, he knows, if he truly wanted to. He could find some other calling, search out some other purpose. But, deep down, he knows these are not real options. He knows what his job is, whatever it takes.  
  
 _At least he is safe, Castiel. At least he is safe._


End file.
